


Footnote

by kmo



Category: Hannibal (TV), The Fall (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 15:41:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8214805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kmo/pseuds/kmo
Summary: Stella Gibson has questions and Bedelia Du Maurier has answers, and it’s been too long since she’d had a partner skilled enough to tango with.





	

Stella hangs back after the reading, browsing among the moleskin journals. When the last of Dr. Du Maurier’s admirers has dispersed, she approaches, sliding her copy of _A Heaven of Hell_ across the table to be signed.

The erstwhile wife of the Chesapeake Ripper looks up at her, and Stella feels a frisson of self-recognition in those icewater blue eyes. “To whom shall I make this out?” she asks in a husky Mid-Atlantic accent that somehow manages to be more imperious than the Queen’s own English.

Stella presses her card down on the frontispiece, the raised letters spelling out Metropolitan Police beneath her fingertips. “Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson.”

Perfectly plucked brows raise a mere fraction of a centimeter, but she bends to sign anyway. The inscription is impossible to read from this angle. “Is this business or pleasure, DSI Gibson?”

“Both, I think,” Stella replies but says no more. She had enjoyed Du Maurier’s lecture. She had enjoyed her book as well, relishing the challenge of paring fact from a glittering and gruesome fiction.

Du Maurier inclines her head graciously, but does not rise to the bait. For a moment, Stella believes that is that. She’s halfway to the door when Du Maurier’s cut-glass voice calls back to her. “Stella Gibson, did you say? The Stella Gibson who caught the Camden Cannibal?”

“The one and only,” Stella says, not bothering to hide a satisfied smile.

“You’re a footnote in my book.” Du Maurier walks up next to her, smoothly swooping down, a hawk in Ferragamo heels.

“We’re all footnotes in somebody’s book, I suppose.”

“Next to Hannibal, your Camden Cannibal was a textbook psychopath, practically begging to be caught. Your capture of the Belfast Strangler was so much more…interesting.”

There’s something unsettling, an unnerving hunger that hangs about Dr. Du Maurier. The way she had known, for example, to zero in on the Spector case, probing at it like an unhealed wound. “All in the line of duty, Dr. Du Maurier.”

“Bedelia, please,” the woman says with a smile that is more strange than flirtatious. “I don’t suppose you’d care to join me for a drink? These readings are thirsty work.”

Stella buttons her coat and tucks her book back into her leather satchel, bemused at being on the receiving end of her own best line. “There’s a hotel a few blocks over with a nice bar.”

Stella opens the door gallantly and Du Maurier swans through. There’s a tingling somewhere in her hindbrain, a sense of danger at having accepted an invitation to this dance. But Stella has questions and Bedelia Du Maurier has answers, and it’s been too long since she’d had a partner skilled enough to tango with.

*

The bar is shadowed and jewel-box sized. Its proximity to the railway station makes it popular for assignations. It’s not the type of place one goes to be seen.

They are on their second pour of Macallan, which is fine as Bedelia has said she is buying. Whatever the woman’s moral deficiencies, one cannot fault her taste in whisky. The smooth burn of the scotch has Stella feeling brighter than she intended. Bedelia remains unaffected and Stella has a sneaking suspicion she may have finally met her match.

She’s used their time together to observe and she has to confess there’s something absolutely eerie about the woman. Beyond the fact, of course, her handbag costs two month’s rent and the sheen of her tailored navy superfine makes Stella feel provincial in her M&S blouse. Bedelia Du Maurier speaks like her words have been translated into hieroglyphics and then back into English again, and her eyes have a haunted look, like she has glimpsed a forbidden truth. It makes Stella think of Dorothy returned from Oz, Susan expelled from Narnia for loving lipsticks and stockings. It’s an affectation, surely. It must be.

Their conversation has turned, as it inevitably would, to the subject of the Chesapeake Ripper and the failings of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“From what I have gathered from my research,” Bedelia begins, caressing the tumbler in her hands, “the Met seems to be much more efficiently run than the FBI. It’s a shame you weren’t on the Ripper case—I might have been spared my forced Florentine honeymoon.”

Stella takes a sip of scotch, rolling it around in her mouth before she speaks. “Some of my colleagues across the pond don’t believe you were forced at all.”

“And what do you believe?”

“That depends.” Stella sprawls across the leather banquette, flexing her policewoman’s bravado. “Are you planning to commit a series of pretentious art murders in Regent’s Park?”

“No,” Bedelia answers, smile curling around her lips, red and ravenous and easy.

“Then whether you went willingly or unwillingly is not my concern. Interpol has proclaimed your innocence. And as far as we know, Lecter committed no crimes in the UK. I have no jurisdiction in these matters.”

“You are merely a disinterested observer, though I get the sense you are not interested in me. You’re interested in Hannibal…and by extension, his relationship with Will Graham. You want to know if you could have done better,” Bedelia says in a velvet purr.

“I met Will Graham once—joint policing conference between the BAU and Scotland Yard. I’ve seen his parlor trick,” Stella says, licking her lips to catch the last of the golden amber scotch.

“Pure empathy,” Bedelia remarks, a riptide of sarcasm running through her words.

Stella traces her finger around the rim of the tumbler, round and round, like a figure skater on a winter pond. Or a Met detective, stuck in a familiar loop of stalk, hunt, capture. “He sweated and twitched his way through his entire lecture. That man should never have been allowed in the field. But cowboys like your friend Jack Crawford will allow just about anyone to carry a gun.”

“I found him similarly unimpressive. I could not say the same for Hannibal,” Bedelia says with a wistfulness that Stella finds disturbing. “Will Graham allowed Hannibal to fall in love with him—that’s how he caught him. And I believe the feeling was not entirely unrequited.”

“Look into the abyss and the abyss looks back—is that what you’re saying?”

“Is that what allowed you to catch Paul Spector?” Bedelia asks, the steel in her words scalpel sharp. “It is my understanding there was a similar level of… _obsession_ …between the two of you. You saved his life.”

It had been years since she’d been fatigued with that old insinuation. It seemed to follow her around like rancid perfume. “I saved his life because I did not want Spector to escape justice,” Stella answers brusquely, as she always has.

“ _Your_ justice,” Bedelia says, mildly admiring. “Hannibal, I think, would like you. Your appearance, of course, would appeal to his aesthetics—he has always been a collector of beautiful things.” Stella feels Bedelia’s normally cool glance warming as it travels the length of Stella’s body; it causes an unexpected warmth to lick down her spine in response. “But that barely contained anger of yours, Stella, threatening to boil over on the world of men and their cruelties is what he’d find most interesting. You simmer away like a snow-covered volcano—the contradiction is delicious to those with an appreciative palate.”

“You talk about Lecter with such a mixture of terror and intimacy. In one breath, your long-lost love, in the next, Satan himself,” Stella says, scotch causing her to want to punch through Bedelia’s frozen composure and land a few targeted observations of her own. “He’s just a _man_ , and when you elevate him to the level of monster, it does no one any favors.”

Bedelia holds Stella’s gaze and her eyes are both otherworldly and sad. It’s that Alice in Wonderland look again, one that suggests that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Stella’s philosophy. “Once, I would have agreed with you. But that was before my journey beyond the veil.”

The conversation goes strangely silent and they are bathed in the whispered conversations of the other bar patrons. It evokes a kind of sense memory in Stella, of another bar in another city with another stunning woman. She catches a whiff of Bedelia’ perfume—it smells of night orchids and jasmine and other dark delights. It is tempting to cast Bedelia Du Maurier in the role of noirish femme fatale, and Stella resting her hand on Bedelia’s silky knee feels like the natural progression of things.

Bedelia gives her a slow, reptilian blink, but does not pull away. She slips her black Amex next to the bill and flags down their waitress with a patrician air. “I took the liberty of reserving a room upstairs while you were in the ladies. Suite 809. I’m going to go up now—you may want to consider joining me.”

Stella slowly blinks in return, caught off guard by Bedelia’s boldness. She’s been one-step behind in their dance all evening, Grace Kelly to Bedelia’s Fred Astaire, forced to follow the other woman’s lead, backwards and in high heels. It sends a jolt of electricity straight to her core, leaving her sex molten. Stella is dry tinder and Bedelia, a flickering match—it doesn’t take much to set her alight. “I don’t need to think about it,” Stella says, hand slipping underneath Bedelia’s skirt, lips descending on hers, pressing and tasting until at last she feels Bedelia melt in her arms, roses blooming in her marble-pale cheeks. She strokes her forefinger against the damp satin of Bedelia’s underwear just once, a promise of things to come. Bedelia’s eyes light up, her entire expression bathed in a kind of neon come-hither glow. Stella kisses her again, slips her tongue between Bedelia’s lips—tasting lipstick, and scotch, and the forbidden knowledge Bedelia has gained beyond the veil. It’s the darkest fruit, like pomegranates laced with opium.

Stella follows Bedelia to the bank of elevators in the lobby. There is a brief gripping moment of hesitation—the fear you feel as the roller coaster starts its climb—and for once it is hers.

Because if Bedelia is the femme fatale, does that make Stella the dopey detective?

*

In the grey dawn, Bedelia dresses to leave, replacing skirt, blouse, and jacket, wrapping her hair in a bun to disguise evidence of a night spent rolling around on 800 thread count sheets. “Check-out is at noon. Feel free to order room-service if you like,” Bedelia says magnanimously.

Though she’s played out this scenario a hundred times before, it has been a long time since she was the one being discarded like an unwanted plaything. “Can’t you stay a little longer?" Stella asks, slipping her hands around Bedelia’s tiny waist, pressing her naked breasts against the smooth fabric of Bedelia’s jacket.

Bedelia hesitates for a moment, silencing Stella with a brief kiss on the lips. “I have an early train. It’s Oxford this afternoon. Then Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dublin. Then back to Baltimore.”

“Back to Hannibal, you mean.”

“I don’t see him.” Bedelia replaces her earrings, back turned to Stella, right hand trembling ever-so-slightly as she threads the golden drops through her ears. “It’s my home,” she says weakly.

Stella finds a terrycloth robe and wraps it around herself. She has seen too many women in thrall to dangerous men, men who abuse them and those they love. Bedelia Du Maurier, for all her cleverness, is a haute-couture variation on a familiar theme. She can feel something awakening in her, like a dragon out of slumber; the desire to protect, to _save_. “You have your safety and your freedom. Don’t go back to him, Bedelia. Stay here.”

“With you?” Bedelia asks, her voice mild and curious.

Stella pats the other woman’s hand. “With me or not with me. Just stay,” she says, willing her words to become an anchor strong enough to weigh Bedelia down, knowing somehow they won’t be enough.

Bedelia squeezes her fingers tentatively. She strokes Stella’s hair and her eyes gloss with tears. “If I stay, there will be art murder in Regent’s Park.” She kisses Stella gently on the cheek, a kiss that stings with goodbye.

Bedelia gathers her papers into her leather briefcase and closes it with a snap. She gives herself one last once over in the suite’s gilt mirror and says over her shoulder, “He would like you, but you would not like him. Don’t go calling on Hannibal Lecter, Stella. Promise me you won’t.”

“Can you promise me the same?” Stella asks, stone-faced.

Bedelia favors her with a twisted, brittle smile. “I promise.”

Stella suspects at least one of them is lying and prays it isn’t her.

Bedelia places her hand on the brass doorknob and pauses, head cocked like she is hearing some kind of invisible music, a radio transmission from beyond the veil. “Brave Stella,” she breathes, “I think he’ll eat your heart.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this one for the better part of the year--they're a challenging couple to make work! But there needs to be more Bedelia/Stella fic out there, so I'm doing my part for our glorious cause.


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